User blog:TARDIS2010/T-2010's F1 Reviews: 2013 Japanese GP
Hello and welcome to another Blog by me TARDIS2010. Today's blog is the first of two this week covering the Formula One and MotoGP races. As you can tell from the title today i am covering this weekend's Formula One Grand Prix in Japan. Within this blog I'm going to go over the main points of the races and my opinions on certain aspects of what happened today. As usual if you've not seen the race then stop reading here as there are Spoilers ahead. Overview So I'll get it over with first: Another Vettel win. Luckily it wasn't another pole and lights to flag victory. So his teammate Mark Webber got pole position which is awesome, sadly he could not convert that to a win but i'll go into that later. Continuing the trend of looking good for an non-Vettel win was Lotus driver Romain Grosjean. He quite literly made a whopper of a start: “When I dropped the clutch I said ‘woah, woah, that’s a good one, come on, come on go for it!’” was how Grosjean described his rocket ship getaway from the second row of the grid. While the Red Bulls dawdled the black-and-gold E21 dodged past them on the right and shot into an unlikely lead. Sadly British driver Lewis Hamilton obtained a rear tyre puncture from contact with Vettel's front wing, when I say contact I mean gentle touch, how he got a puncture is beyond me. There was also a first corner crash between Jules Bianchi and Gideo van de Garde. There was some really good hard racing going on around lap 19/20 between the Ferrari of Felipe Massa and the Sauber of Esteban Gutierrez which was by far the most exiting point in the race for me. Having cosseted his tyres for 37 laps Vettel cashed in his chips with 16 laps to go, pitting for an unused set of hard tyres that would see him through till the end of the race. His tyres were eight laps younger than Grosjean’s and he immediately went on maximum attack, hounding the Lotus into the chicane. Accelerating towards the start line Vettel had the DRS advantage and Grosjean couldn’t move across quickly enough to stop the Red Bull drawing alongside and past. But that only put Vettel into second place. His team mate was up ahead, until two laps later he pitted for the last time and came out four seconds behind Grosjean. Webber eventually overtook Grosjean for second. Despite the advantage of softer tyres than Grosjean, and ones that were most likely several laps newer, Webber spent half-a-dozen laps staring at the Lotus’s rear wing. “At the end of the race, the DRS is not as effective because you’re on the rev limiter,” he explained. Webber Strategy Vettel won after Red Bull switched his team-mate Mark Webber, who was ahead of him for the first half of the race, to do an extra stop. I myself wonder why they did this. Red Bull said they were forced to put Webber on a three-stop because he made a relatively early first pit stop to change tyres on lap 11. They made this stop because he had "run out of tyres", as Red Bull team principal Christian Horner put it. In my opinion and from what i was seeing Webber was not really struggling performance-wise at that point due to tyre wear. OK, he had lost 0.4 seconds to leader Romain Grosjean's Lotus on lap 10, but his lap time was basically the same as he had done on lap eight, which does not suggest his tyres had gone off the cliff as such. Once Webber had pitted, Lotus decided to pit Grosjean too, to make sure he was not 'undercut' by Webber - this is where a driver loses a place because a rival behind who pits for fresh tyres before him makes up enough time to be ahead when the guy in front makes his stop. Some people are syaing Red Bull did it delibratly to gte Mark out of the way, others are saying why would they do that. If i'm honest i'm leaning towards the 'Red Bull got him out of the way' group of people. If Red Bull did favour Vettel, it would surprise no-one. As a leading figure from a rival team said: "They wanted that guy to win, and they went about it in a very professional manner. Anyone worth their salt would have done the same." Grosjean Last year Grosjean was considered a bit of a annoyance on the track with his consitant lap 1 crashes. Since the news that Kimi Raikkonen will be going to Ferrari next year however he has really upped his game. He knows he has got to do the job and, boy, is he doing it. He's saying to the team they don't need a new lead driver - he's their man. He's like a whole different guy from a year ago. Japan on Sunday was an impeccable drive by Grosjean in a car that is not as quick as the Red Bulls. What the race showed, once Grosjean had made a great start and passed both Red Bulls for the lead, was that it is not easy to pass in F1. He can't be criticised for losing out to the Red Bulls in the end. He did everything he could in defending from Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber. It was a great performance. The next step is to do that every weekend, which is what the great drivers who have gone on to win world championships are able to do. I'm hoping the Grosjean will win his first race by the end of this year, or early next year as he deserves to as he's a really quick driver he just has to keep doing well and it will come to him. Racing This week I'd also like to touch on the subject of racing. People have been saying that what Vettel did this weekend proves he can race. I myself don't see this, yes he can manage his tyres better than most, but should the tyres be like they are. In my opinion no. Ok so you have they have to race with what they've got but he was worse on the tyres we started the season with. Also his pass on Grosjean, I don't call that racing. When someone is overtaking someone the driver being overtaken can only change direction once. I'd like to know how this is racing in any sense. Also all Vettel did was use DRS, so he didn't really do anything in my eyes. He gained extra speed from a device on his car and Grosjean could only move once. Yeah that's really racing.... Ok people would say I'm just Vettel-hating. Maybe I am, but that pass on Grosjean was not racing in my eyes. I want proper hard racing fighting for a position not I've got DRS and you can only move once: I Win, that quite frankly is terrible. Conclusion It's now inevitable that Vettel will win his fourth World Championship with even Fernando Alonso throwing in the towel. "Even if Vettel doesn't finish all of the races I need to win nearly all, so it's a matter of time Vettel is champion," Alonso said. o win the title, however, Alonso - who has won 32 grands prix in his career to Vettel's 34 - would have to win three of the remaining four races and finish second in the other, with Vettel retiring from them all. Alonso acknowledged his Ferrari did not have enough pace to do that. All-in-all it was an OK race, nothing amazing in my eyes, I'm just getting fed up with Mr. Vettel winning everytime. It puts me off. I started the year loving F1, I'm ending it wanting it to just stop quite frankly, which is sad really. I'd love it if they banned him at the end of the year and told him to sod off, but hey that's not goign to happen. Hope you enjoyed this blog I'll be back later in the week to review the Malaysian MotoGP race. All comments and opinions are welcome. Thnaks for reading:) T-2010 | Talk to Me | The one, the only 16:02, October 15, 2013 (UTC) Category:Blog posts Category:TARDIS2010's Blogs Category:TARDIS2010's F1 Blogs